


Ring in the New

by tosca1390



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-03
Updated: 2011-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-14 08:56:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/pseuds/tosca1390
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Holidays were not Winona’s cup of tea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ring in the New

**Author's Note:**

  * For [izzyb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/izzyb/gifts).



> izzyb, I hope you enjoy this! Many thanks to my beta, and to those who organized this exchange. Title is from a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Standard disclaimer applies.

*

Holidays were not Winona’s cup of tea.

Her late mother had been Jewish, but lapsed; her father an atheist and a scientist to the core; and so she grew up wholly without holiday tradition. Her years were marked by birthdays, her father’s annual conferences and presentations, and exams and tests. Her holidays were the beginnings of a new school term, graduations. Science and logic served as her backbone, and so holidays were lost to her childhood self. When she grew older and decided to venture into Starfleet and space, she had nearly forgotten that they existed at all, but for her friends' celebrations and stories. She didn’t identify it as a failing, and really thought nothing of what she might be missing.

Until she met George Kirk, that is.

“Are you doing anything special for break?”

Winona, settled on her small couch in her single Starfleet dorm, shrugged. “I don’t think so,” she said to her father, watching the sad tilt to his mouth, his eyes through the video comm. “I’ll just stay here.”

He nodded, gray and very tired on the screen. “Martha is taking me out for New Year’s Eve. She says I’m turning into a hermit,” he said, smoothing down his thinning hair.

At that she smiled faintly. “We’ve always been hermits, Dad,” she said softly. “But that sounds nice.”

He hesitated just a moment. “You don’t mind, about Martha-?”

“No, of course not,” she said quietly. Martha was kind and funny and outgoing enough for three people, and had made her father smile at something other than Winona’s grades for the first time since her mother died. “You know I don’t.”

“I know.” He cleared his throat. “And where’s George?”

Just at the mention of his name, she could feel a flush high on her cheeks. Her chest ached faintly, something she couldn’t quite place. They’d been together for less than six months; it shouldn’t feel like this, strong and lingering, like it would last. “He went home for Christmas. I assume he’s still in Iowa,” she said.

“So it’s just you on your own tonight?” her dad asked.

She shrugged, smiling slightly. She’d gone home for a few days over Christmas (Martha loved Christmas; last year, the first year she and her father had been dating, was the first time Winona and her father had a Christmas tree in the house), but had left for the safety and security of school. Old habits were hard to break, and school was still her favorite refuge, as much as George Kirk was trying to loosen her up.

Sighing, she shook her head. “I’ve got Chinese food on the way, books to read, and there will be fireworks over the Bay, so I’ll have something to look at for a little while. I don’t care about holidays, Dad.”

After a few more moments, the Chinese food arrived, and she said goodbye to her dad. The sadness lining his face still haunted her, after all these years. Sometimes, in quiet moments with George, she caught herself; he looked at her the way she remembered from her parents, fuzzy childhood memories that stayed with her even through grief and school. She wasn’t scared of much—the first year and a half of Starfleet took care of many fears—but she was scared of George, and the ache in her chest whenever he was with her or when she thought of him.

Hours later, in the middle of her sweet-and-sour chicken and a journal article on alien diseases jumping planets and species, her door chime sounded. Her timepiece said nearly midnight; sighing, she uncurled herself from the corner of the couch, her muscles aching from sitting in one position for too long. It was a familiar ache from long years of late-night reading and library vigils, an old friend.

The chime sounded again as she crossed the small room, tiptoeing around her bed. “Coming!” she called.

The door slid open with an airy _whoosh_. George Kirk stood before her, a bottle of champagne under one arm and a wide open grin curving his mouth. “I knew I’d find you here,” he said, leaning in to kiss her briefly.

Startled, she could only stare at him. Her mouth was cold where his had lain. “I’m always here,” she said after a moment, instinctively reaching out for his hand.

He curled his fingers around hers and pushed her back, entering the room. His fingers were chilled, his cheeks ruddy in the warm light. “Your dedication is admirable, but good god, Winona, you need to get out more,” he said with a grin. The door whooshed shut behind him.

“Why leave when you’re here?” she asked archly, trying to contain the fluttering in her middle.

He set the bottle of champagne down on the floor and leaned in to kiss her properly. His hands fell to her waist, cool even through her thick sweater, and he pulled her in close. She thought she could smell the farm on him, though she’d never been there. Her free hand slid up his neck, feeling the short crop of his hair. “Shorter than before,” she murmured into his mouth.

He laughed, a short low sound, which reverberated right into her chest. “My mom thought I looked ragged. She made me get it cut.”

She met his gaze, bluer than any sky she’d seen, and smiled. “I like it.”

“Good,” he said, guiding her back and back towards her small bed. “What, books on your padd and Chinese?”

“Journal articles, but yes,” she said softly, letting him pull her down to the bed. He lay on his back, she on her side, pressed limb to limb.

His hand fell to the long fall of her hair, smoothing it back from her face. “I like your predictability.”

“Because it offsets you?”

“We complement each other,” he said with a grin. He lowered his face to hers, mouth tracing along the line of her jaw. She shivered. “Command and science, gold and blue—“

She kissed him quiet, shutting her eyes and sighing. When he said things like that, so confident and sure, she just couldn’t breathe. Her chest ached as he murmured her name into her mouth, his hand a sure weight on the jut of her hip.

“Wait,” he murmured. “It’s almost midnight.”

She hitched her thigh over his hip. “So?”

“So I came all this way to celebrate New Year’s with you, and we’re going to do it,” he said with a laugh, kissing her quickly before he slid off of the bed and went back to retrieve the bottle of champagne.

She sat up to watch him, smoothing her hair. Outside, the quad was silent. “You came back for me?” she asked after a moment, her throat suddenly tight.

He toed off his shoes and smiled at her, walking back to the bed with the bottle in hand. “Of course I did. I missed you,” he said, wrenchingly sincere.

It caught her off-guard—all of a sudden she could only see her father’s wrecked face the night her mother died, the grief that never truly left his eyes. “George—“

“Yeah, it’s corny, I know,” he said with a shrug, settling against the backboard of the bed. She crawled up towards him, sitting shoulder to shoulder. “Don’t tease me too much, all right?”

She smiled, pressing down the curls of fear, the worry. “Wouldn’t dream of it. Just with all your command friends, of course.”

He set the bottle between them and leaned over to kiss her. “I think this is our year, Winona,” he said quietly.

Kissing him softly, she cupped his jaw in her hand. “Why’s that?”

“Because I said so,” he teased, slipping an arm over her waist. “Kiss me at midnight?”

“Sure,” she said, unable to control the flush rising on her face, the smile on her lips. “You’ll be my first ever midnight kiss, you know.”

He shook his head. “That’s right. You and your odd lack of holiday spirit. I’ll fix that by next Christmas.”

Just then, the timepiece chimed midnight. With his arm around her and his hand cupping her cheek, he kissed her softly and sweetly. Outside, she could hear distant fireworks, muted cheering, but it was all behind her as George anchored her in this new present, this new year.

“Happy New Year,” he said, voice low and quiet into the kiss.

She met his gaze, smiling. “Happy New Year,” she said for the first time in many years.

Grinning, he grabbed the champagne and popped it gingerly, just spilling a few drops on their jeans. “Tie to celebrate,” he said, taking a swallow and handing the bottle to her.

Later, after drinking and kissing and his long hands all over her body, she lay awake in the darkness of the new year. George slept at her side, his arm draped over her naked waist, his mouth near the line of her neck. She could feel that same pressure on her chest, the fluttering of her heart as she listened to him breathe slowly and deeply. George was steady and solid in her bed, in her life.

Sighing, she curled into him and shut her eyes. Maybe holidays weren’t so silly after all.

*


End file.
